page_title: 1969 EC-121 shootdown incident
section_title: U.S. response
hierarchical_section_title: 1969 EC-121 shootdown incident / U.S. response
caption_attribution_description: English: Cropped and modified version map from "Historical Crises in North Korea Lessons from the USS Pueblo and EC-121 Incidents—1968 and 1969" by Richard A. Mobley from Studies in Intelligence Volume 59, Number 1 (March 2015)
context_page_description: On 15 April 1969, a United States Navy Lockheed EC-121M Warning Star of Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One on a reconnaissance mission was shot down by a North Korean MiG-21 aircraft over the Sea of Japan. The plane crashed 90 nautical miles off the North Korean coast and all 31 Americans on board were killed, which constitutes the largest single loss of U.S. aircrew during the Cold War era.
  The plane was an adaptation of a Lockheed Super Constellation and was fitted with a fuselage radar, so the primary tasks were to act as a long range patrol, conduct electronic surveillance, and act as a warning device.
  The Nixon administration did not retaliate against North Korea apart from staging a naval demonstration in the Sea of Japan a few days later, which was quickly removed. It resumed the reconnaissance flights within a week to demonstrate that it would not be intimidated by the action while at the same time avoiding a confrontation.
context_section_description: The US responded by activating Task Force 71 (TF-71) to protect future flights over those international waters. Initially, the Task Force comprised the aircraft carriers Enterprise, Ticonderoga, Ranger, and Hornet with a screen of cruisers and destroyers that also included the battleship New Jersey. The ships for TF-71 came mostly from Southeast Asia duty. This deployment became one of the largest shows of force in the area since the Korean War.
  Following the attack, some, including Representative Mendel Rivers responded to the attack by calling for retaliation against North Korea.  On April 16th, the United States National Security Council considered the following options:
  Show of force using naval and air forces
  Resumption of EC-121 missions with escorts
  "Select military combat actions" such as:
  Destruction of a North Korean aircraft over water
  Selected air strikes against a military target
  Shore bombardment of military targets
  Ground raids across the Demilitarized Zone
  Attack on military targets near the Demilitarized Zone by artillery or missile fire
  Attacks on North Korean naval vessels by U.S. submarines
  Blockade
  Mining/threatening to mine North Korean waters
  Seizure of North Korean assets abroad
  In addition to the NSC's ideas, the Joint Chiefs of Staff prepared several plans to bomb the airfield at Sondok and Wonsan.  If all went according to plan, bombers would attack the airfields under cover of night. CINCPAC proposed the positioning of ships, with missiles capable of taking down planes, in the Sea of Japan with orders to destroy North Korean aircraft, impound other North Korean vessels venturing into international waters (fishing boats, etc.), and fire onto the shore (especially near Wonsan).
  In the end, no action was taken against the North Koreans in the days following the attack. The new Nixon administration had little to no information about the location and availability of both U.S. and North Korean forces, as the administration had difficulty communicating with those in the Pacific. By the time this information was communicated to the planners, it was too late to react. Both Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger were ashamed at the outcome of the event, with Kissinger revealing that "our conduct in the EC-121 crisis as weak, indecisive and disorganized." Once it became clear that no action would be taken against the North Koreans, Nixon promised that "they’ll (i.e., North Koreans) never get away with it again," and ordered a "resumption of aerial reconnaissance flights."
caption: Defender Station
exif: {}